By 3:00 AM I was in my T-shirt and cutoffs, headed for the beach. All that night I walked barefoot in the surf, trying to pull the pieces together. The light of morning came sooner than I expected. Tortured by restlessness, I just kept walking, for so long I lost count of how many times I circled the island. Dora called down from a lookout point in the cliffs announcing breakfast. I waved her off.
Hours later, Niki appeared on the patio outside her room, watching me. I stopped to look at her across the distance, trying to fathom a relationship that could last over two thousand years. I could scarcely grasp it, though I knew it was true. All the fear, the struggle, and the indecision I’d had with other women now made sense. I’d been waiting for Niki, and she for me. Our walk through one ancient life had ended abruptly, tragically, but our walk through eternity was a never-ending journey. Looking at her—arms crossed, her long hair lifting in the breeze—I knew that we could walk a hundred million years and never sound the depths of our love. In that moment, I understood that I was looking at an integral piece of my own soul, a spiritual companion whose essence was interwoven into the very fabric of my being. Everything in me screamed to go to her, hold her. I couldn’t. Not now. I forced myself to turn away.
All that Euphemia predicted was happening. Too restless to sleep, wracked with self-doubt, running as hard as I could away from this incomprehensible madness, I plodded through the sand for the rest of that day and all of the following night, stopping only for short but futile periods of rest.
The night gave way to the frail light of another morning. Exhausted, I dropped to my knees and cradled my face in the palms of my dirty hands. Hunger knotted my stomach. My brain, wired for an emotional collapse, began to shut down. I was ready to quit; I couldn’t even remember why I’d started.
Through eyes bleary with fatigue, I gazed over that indistinguishable smudge that was the sea. Something caught my attention: a strange shift in the water. Dolphins, I thought, as I watched the rippling surface. But it wasn’t dolphins; it was something else, as if some sort of design was attempting to impose itself on the surface. Impossible. Almost delirious, I relaxed my vision and peered into the chaotic scramble. Huge, concentric lines began forming a very definite pattern. Dizzy with fatigue, I stood, careful not to blink away the strange phantasm. Then, everything came into focus. I was staring at a watery outline of the Labyrinth of the Cave.
A child stood at the center of the labyrinth, her arms opened toward me, beckoning. I rubbed my eyes and took a teetering step toward the labyrinth. It was the little girl who had given me the pink quartz. I reached into my pocket and felt the soft stone in my fingers. The child needed me. The people of the island needed me. Walking the labyrinth made no sense, but I knew I had to do it.
Suddenly my eyes blurred with tears. When I blinked them away, everything vanished—the girl, the labyrinth—only the natural surface of the water remained. I stood staring at the water for a long moment before turning for the house.
I found Niki asleep beneath a blanket in a chair on her patio. She stirred when I laid a hand on her shoulder. I gave her a few seconds before I whispered in her ear, “Niki, I’ve got to do it.”
“Do what?” She stretched and spoke through a groggy yawn. “What do you have to do?”
“The Labyrinth of the Cave. I know now. It’ll be all right.”
She straightened, her eyes filled with sudden urgency. “You … you are certain?”
“Yeah. I’m certain.”
She took me by the hand, and, without a word, she led me to her bed. Beneath a blanket of strange and tender peace, we spent the next few days and nights, sleeping and making love as if there was a two-thousand-year gap we suddenly had to close.
Niki and I hired a seaplane to fly us to Pialigos. Little in the way of conversation passed between us during the flight. For me, it was enough just to be with her, hold her hand, and indulge in the beauty of her face painted in the soft morning light filtering through the plane’s window. If she was worried, she didn’t show it. She seemed at peace with her thoughts, satisfied to turn an occasional reassuring smile in my direction.
I would have expected the same kind of serenity from Euphemia. Instead, she greeted us at the dock with the nervous energy of a Broadway producer whose star was late for opening night.
“Come,” she said, clutching urgently at my arm. “We must begin the preparations at once.” She maintained a stiff and determined pace on our hike to the monastery.
With matters now out of her hands, Niki lagged behind, her mood, I sensed, growing more somber as we approached the monastery. She was a hundred yards back when Euphemia and I reached the Labyrinth of Roses. The single-minded priestess didn’t wait for Niki to catch up before she began ticking off my itinerary.
“Now listen carefully. You will go into solitude. A girl named Lia will take you to a hut. This will be your dwelling place for the cleansing period. Here you will fast. It is critical to have all toxins removed from your body and your mind. You will drink only a tea. Everything is prepared. Near the hut is a mineral pool. You will follow a trail through a small canyon. The pool is at the end of this trail. The water is quite hot, and you must enter it carefully.”
“Enter it? You mean … I’ve got to sit in hot water?”
“Stuart, this fear of hot water is a remnant of your past. To succeed in the Walk, you must confront it. You will enter the pool at sunrise, again at noon, and once again at sunset. Stay in the water for as long as you can. Stand. Cool down, and then get back in. Do this for one hour, three times a day. The minerals in the water will draw all impurities from your body. When you go back to your hut, you will find a jar containing the tea placed on a large flat stone. It will taste strange to you. Bitter. Drink it slowly.
“During this period, observe your mind; see that it is filled with needless chatter, like the wheel of a cart always turning. Let it go. Seek the stillness of your inner being. There is great power in stillness. When the time is right, you will find a ceremonial garment and a new tea next to the hut. This tea will be different. It is an ancient concoction of herbs designed to enhance soul memories. Once you drink the final tea, put on the garment and wait. Someone will come for you.”
Her intensity was starting to make me nervous.
Niki approached, and I could see she’d been crying. I started for her, but Euphemia raised a hand of caution. “There must be no distractions,” she said.
I ignored the warning and took Niki in my arms. “Hey, you’re not wussing out on me, are you?”
“Now, I am the one who is afraid,” Niki said. I could feel her trembling.
I buried my face in her hair. “Yeah, well, if you want to know the truth, I’d rather be drinking a glass of wine in one of those quiet little beachfront tavernas on Santorini, watching the sun go down.”
I felt the whoosh of a crying chuckle escape across my chest. She pulled back and looked at me through large wet eyes. “Would I be sitting with you?”
“You buying?”
“I buy last time.” She sniffed.
“All right. I’ll buy.”
“And when we finish the wine?”
“You know, now that you mention it, I’ve been giving that some serious thought.”
“Oh? How serious?”
“Very serious.” I cleared my throat. “I was kind of wondering what you might be doing for the next two thousand years.”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you say next.”
“How about, I love you. Would you consider marrying a guy like me?”
The fear melted from her eyes; her face brightened with joy. She glanced at the emotionless face of Euphemia, and then she quickly turned back to me.
“Yes. Yes, I would most definitely consider marrying a guy like you.”
Euphemia, her eyes full of caution, took a step toward us. “We must take this one moment at a time. There is much to do.” She turned to Niki. “You must not forget that there is danger in the Walk of the Prophet.
“What?” Niki’s eyes widened with something more than uncertainty—a hint of betrayal, maybe. “But … he cannot fail. You yourself said so.”
“The preparations, they are critical. There must be no distractions.”
“You … you are saying … he could—”
“I am saying there must be no distractions.” Just then, a girl of about twelve—gangly, light brown hair cropped below her ears, big teeth—appeared and stood waiting. “If you are ready,” Euphemia said, now anxious to separate us, “Lia will escort you to the hut. She knows only a few words of English, but she has her instructions. Do exactly as she says.”
Niki and I held each other for a few more moments.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be back.”
“You had better be.” Niki found the courage to force a smile. “You are buying.”
I followed Lia on a wordless thirty-minute hike to the tiny white building that would be my home. For how long, I didn’t know. Lia pushed open the door of the hut, and then she stood back and motioned me to have a look. Inside, there was a cot, a small wooden table, and a chair. A short stack of clothing lay on the cot; a pair of sandals rested on the dirt floor.
“Your clothing,” Lia said, both hands, palms up, extended toward me.
Unsure about what she meant, I pointed to the garments on the bed.
“My clothing. Thank you.”
She shook her head and then held out her hands again. “Your clothing.”
“Thank you.” I was pointing to the cot, smiling. “My clothing. Thank you.”
She tugged at the tail of my T-shirt, her way of telling me that I was missing the point. “Your clothing,” she repeated.
I was beginning to understand. “You want … my clothing? My shirt? Why?”
She waited. Reluctantly, I pulled off the shirt and handed it to her. She took it and nodded again.
“All of it? You want all of my clothing?”
She said nothing.
Jesus. “I’ll … um … I’ll just step inside and …” I slipped through the door, removed my cutoffs, and tossed them to her. “There you go.” Left only with my briefs and tennis shoes, I snatched up the shirt and pants from the bed, covered myself, and peered through the crack in the door. “Okay, you can go now. I’ll just put on these—”
“Your clothing.”
The girl’s face held an uncompromising, no-negotiations frown. I pulled off my shoes and tossed them out to her.
“There you go, kid,” I said, determined to hold on to my underwear. She waited. “No! That’s it. That’s all I’m giving you. Now git. Git on back home.”
She didn’t budge.
“All right. You want it all? Fine.” I did the one-legged, underwear-removing hop, yanked off the briefs, hooked the waistband over my thumb, stepped outside, and shot them like a rubber band straight at the wide-eyed little bugger. They billowed like a parachute and landed squarely on her head. “Satisfied?”
She shrieked and tore at the shorts, and then she disappeared up the path, giggling all the way.
I slipped on the loose-fitting pants, shirt, and sandals and then went outside to have a look around.
The hut stood in the cool shadows of the surrounding cliffs, a mix of red sand and stone slabs with shrubs, gnarled cedars, yucca, and tufts of spiny grass growing from crevices. A faint trail led away from the hut, into the cliffs. I followed it through a corridor heavy with sulfur-tainted air.
I knelt beside the pool and plunged my hand through curls of steam. Apprehension tugged at my breath. I slipped off my clothes and eased into the water. I broke into a sweat, stood to cool off, and then forced myself to sit back down, repeating the process for what I figured was about an hour. Heavy with exhaustion, I dressed and headed for the hut.
As Euphemia had promised, I found a small clay jar filled with a pithy tea sitting on a slab of rock near the hut. The tea had a bitter edge, though not unpleasant. I sipped it down as quickly as it cooled, headed for the cot, and fell into a deep sleep.
In the days that passed, it felt as if forty-seven years of toxic sludge melted from my senses. The sky, the earth, the wind, the birds, even the insects, all became objects of intense fascination. I discovered that I could sit quietly for hours, listen, watch, and feel everything that transpired around and within me. Sitting in the hot pool actually became a pleasure that I looked forward to. I understood what Euphemia meant when she said, “There is great power in stillness.” I began to see how I’d weakened myself by creating some busy, all-important identity that had formed a barrier between my mind and the larger, universal soul of the cosmos. The Great Mother? The Zadim was calling, had been calling all along, and I was finally starting to tune in to it.
The last light of the day was already showing itself in soft streaks of pink easing across the sky. I waded from the pool, got dressed, and headed back to the hut and the usual jar of tea. The jar was there, but so was something else, something that gave me reason to pause. It was a neatly folded piece of clothing. I picked it up slowly and let it unfold to its full length: a simple, white, cotton, hooded cowl, with strips of fabric attached as ties. I’d been given the ceremonial garment that I would wear on the walk.
Suddenly I could draw nothing more than a shallow breath. I slipped out of my clothes, pulled the robe over my head, and knelt at the rock. In trembling hands I held the jar of tea. The aroma was definitely different, sweet with a trace of mint. I sipped it, savoring its soothing flow through the growing tightness in my stomach. Like a man condemned to a firing squad, I glanced repeatedly at the path where the escorts to my execution would soon appear. I gulped the last swallow and paced to quell my apprehension. What had I done to myself? I took another step and swooned under a sudden feeling of lightness in my head. I sat on the rock and closed my eyes. The tea must have contained some kind of narcotic. Thinking turned to dreaming, and dreaming to near unconsciousness.
I did not care that my body was suddenly folding, crumpling to the ground.
J Douglas Bottorff 